CHAPTER XIV.
"Once upon a time a little girl when she opened a large fruit that had come from the colonies, a big creature came out of it, a green creature, and it bit her and that made her die." It was my little friend Antoinette (she was six and I seven) who was telling me the story which had been suggested to her because we were about to break and divide an apricot between us.

We were at the extreme end of her garden in the lovely month of June under a branching apricot tree.

We sat very close together upon the same stool in a house about as big as a bee-hive, which we had built for our exclusive use out of old planks.

Our dwelling was covered with pieces of foreign matting that had come from the Antilles packed about some boxes of coffee.

The sunbeams pierced the roof, which was of a coarse straw-colored material, and the warm breeze that stirred the leaves of the trees about us made the sunlight dance as it fell upon our faces and aprons.